Kayaking Channel Islands

When we decided to go camping at Channel Islands for the Memorial Day weekend I was a little intimidated. Not really because of the 12+ miles of ocean kayaking or dark scary sea caves or sleeping in tents next to foxes - these are ok! It was rather the fear of whether or not I would be able to empty bowels in mud pits. The islands were rumored to be devoid of electricity and other civilized facilities such as ceramic commodes. This fear did, however, help reduce a lot of load before heading out.

Ours was a 2 day visit with one night of camping. A fast stomach-swirling speed boat brought us to the island within an hour. Then on, it was just manual labour - right from the human conveyor belt that unloads luggage at the docks to hauling bags to campsite, to propping up the tents. But soon enough the 5 of us and our guide were all paddling away into the open ocean in our bright yellow sun-lit kayaks.

We got a really awesome guide - a chilled out kayaker who was thoroughly familiar not only with the sea caves and their safe entry-exit points but also with the flora and fauna around. Every location we would group up he would tell us a story. Hallmarks of a great guide is knowing how to transform a pelican poop covered rock into heroic remnants of an ecological bio-cycle drama. We did not explore just sea caves - but rather historic caverns that mother earth carved with molten hot lava, where the mighty sea goddess boomed though the crevices, where the surf sank many hapless vessels, where careless kayakers were meted severe punishments and where seals huddle for warmth. Entering and exiting some caves required abundance of courage coupled with kayaking expertise for safe navigation. Adrenaline seems to be such a good ink when it comes to etching long term memories.

Camping is a different experience all together. It did not take long for me to learn that voice travels far and loud across the campsite. So singing Aagaya vennilaave at night en-route to the restroom (the campground did have them, phew) can wake and irritate sleeping campers in their tents. Few other lessons learned were, island foxes are timid creatures and there is no need to run top speed from them, shaking tents are not to be investigated and fluid intake before bed time can result in long nocturnal hikes.

Reminiscing CMU I - An inappropriate act

If it feels like life's moving too quick too fast,
It's time to slow down, reminisce the past,
Blog old memories, make them really last
So here I go, penning times passed...

First days on campus I was a simple student,
trying to be humble, yet very prudent.
Life in this land was still very new,
of the culture, people, I had no clue.

So many places, there'd be free food,
pizzas, colas, chocolates, oh so good!
Stopping by tables & stopping by stall,
picking up goodies, both big and small.
Cause? who cares! it's free? that's all!

One such desk of some campaign,
there were many sweets - free again.
As I passed by their busy stall lane,
someone gave me something colored very plain,
I kept walking - did not hear them explain...

Wrapped in plastic, it was an odd looking sweet,
Still in the walk, I tore it open to eat,
People looked at me like I was some cheat!
Some gave me looks of pure shock, defeat!!
One even glanced & beat a hasty retreat!!!
Whats so wrong? in eating a free treat?

But the rolled up ring, did not look right,
Somehow I did not feel like giving it a bite,
so tossed it in the thrash, out of eye sight.

It was only later when I went back to look,
did I realize what the campaign really was...
At those plastic wraps I blinked in cold pause...
"Global AIDS awareness" read the banner's cause!

:-P

Holi at Stanford II - Mein Kampf

22nd Mar 1989, Borivali, Bombay: A little boy was filling his plastic water-pump from a bucket. Hardly a preschooler, his tiny arms were working hard to fill the pump up quickly. After all this was his new pump and he wanted to impress his friends. There were many coloured up boys and girls of various ages that day celebrating Holi in the terrace of his apartment building. His parents were looking elsewhere when it happened...

A really naughty older bully kid, coloured all over in dark violet and green, barged in to fill up his own pump from the same bucket. The little boy gracefully gave way, a little intimidated looking at the older one's face. Without warning, the bully lifted his violet coloured hand and brought it down in a hard painful slap onto the tiny one's back. The Whack was so hard, the bully's hand not only imprinted the little one's white shirt in violet but also his skin below in pink!

Wincing in pain, the little one screamed out, "Aww, Kyun Kiya aise?" (why did u do that?).
Grinning in pure evil, the bully replied, "Isse CHAPA kehte hain" (This is called an imprint!)
Knowing he'll get into a lot of trouble if he were to hit back, the little one just gave the bully a cold fuming stare.
Bully knew this and smiled again before walking away, "Darpok log CHAPA nahin de sakte" (cowards can't slap imprints)
The tiny boy vowed then that one day he'll prove the bully wrong........
(If this were a bollywood film, it would have starting raining in torrents immediately with background music)

20 years later....

27th Mar, 2010, Sandhill fields, Stanford: A young man in his mid-twenties stepped into the Holi grounds. Asha Holi at Stanford whose proceeds are to fund education in India, relentlessly attracts the young and old alike. Flanked at the entrance were two angels, randomly smearing faces of unsuspecting new entrants with pink and yellow powder. Expecting (or rather hoping :P) to get smeared, the young man slowed down in front of one of the angels and closed his eyes. An embarrassing odd pause followed, to be broken not with gentle coloured palms but by a rather harsh slap on his back. Eyes opened, instead of the delightful angel, he met two of his grisly old time acquaintances, "HAPPY HOLI man!"... Greetings followed but when his acquaintances left, the young man couldn't help realize that his first colour was a pink imprint of a hand on his shirt!! Memories raced back 20 years! The CHAPA! The bully... The vow! It was time to pacify some very old demons, he thought :-P ...

Change is the only constant of time. A lot of time had passed by... a lot of things had changed... there was no bully around ... there was no little boy either! Just a sea full of colourful people gleefully smearing and dousing each other with sweet smelling organic powders. No one to take revenge on! Arms that can pump over a hundred and fifty pounds - quite useless in this context. The young man could only see one way to pacify those old demons. Just prove that he was no DarPok! (coward). Loading up his palms with green powder, he began...

No force necessary and no slapping either. Courage is all that is really needed. Some would appear a little annoyed, but "Happy Holi" would cheer them up. Some would colour him back. Most others wouldn't even notice! This continued for a while until our guy met up with his friends. The latter did not quite understand why this otherwise gentle person was going around imprinting the shirts of totally random people with his colour laden palms!! But by then, the task was more than done! Any direction he would look he'd see a dozen shirts imprinted with the green hand! No more a Darpok, his CHAPA demons were finally laid to rest! It was time to go home and blog ;-)

"Happy Holi"

Me versus the kid

Getting to play violin in at the Livermore temple auditorium this Saturday for a Purandaradasa event was a big thing to me for multiple reasons. First it was on stage and before my violin teacher - I had never done that before. Next it was in a raga called Behag which I had never played before. Lastly, I had just a week to prepare!

Naturally nervous, I was rather restless as I awaited my turn to go on stage. A little American born Indian girl, barely ten years old, wearing a green checked frock (pavadai), thick spectacles looked side ways at me with folded arms and smiled. I think I tried to smile back. "First time on stage?", she asked. A little taken aback, I replied, "No, No, I have played before, just been a while... that's all". Then hoping that I won't seem like a complete newbie, I went on to show off, "Yea, I used to play violin in my college's musical society". The little girl was hardly impressed, "Whose student are you?". I told my teacher's name. "How long have you been learning?". Now I was taken completely aback! This little juvenile mistress was actually sizing me up!! But before I could ask her back these questions, our turn to play on stage came and I had to leave to meet my fellow violinists. But It was ON! Little sister! "Sizing me up eh? We'll see who gets the better applause", I told her with my looks.

The trouble with playing in events like these is that every Tom, Dick and Harry in the audience might be a Carnatic expert. We were playing to a thisra nadai talam which was hardly very common and to my shock, there were folks in the audience who would clap along the correct tala! Now my rendition of the song on the violin wasn't really to flawless perfection. I played the swaras mostly right, but hurried up on the tala in at least 2 places. But I didn't care, looking daggers at the little girl, I finished my rendition with a rather stylish, Pa Ma Ga Ma Gaaaaa.. as if I had been playing Behag since the day I was born.
Well, for what it was worth, the audience applause was reasonable, at best.

Now it was the little girl's turn. A vocalist, the way she went on stage and sat down, she could have given Sudha Raghunathan a run for her money. Not a remote shred of fear, she began her Purandaradasa keerthana in Mohana raga slowly, then sang in second speed, then third. At the end of the stanzas, the way she would roll her eyes in a slow blink, it would look like she's doing the song a favor by singing it!! Ok, so it was admittedly immaculate, flawless even. When she finished the astounding audience applause rang defeat in my ears. Hey Cmon! I played Behag (much harder than Mohanam that she sang) and that too I did it with bow and strings! But No! The audience clearly loved her rendition way more than mine. I conceded defeat with slow clapping of my own, the good sport that I am :-P

From next time on, I have decided to shave my face as thoroughly as possible and look as much as a kid as I can. For in art, the older you look, the higher seem to be the expectations!

Context Sensitivity

Before I get to 2010, let me quickly pen down, in chronological order, three of my very small stories from 2009 that taught me an interesting lesson. They show how important it is to watch what you speak and how heavily our language relies upon established context. Context Sensitivity is the reason we don't have too many computers that can talk back to us. If you, like me, have spent a year or more writing a compiler, you'd readily agree that human conversations are true evolutionary marvels! Of course, when we don't watch our mouths, even we, make mistakes....

************ Mangoes and Girls ************

Early 2009, I went in a inter-team outing to the mountain winery at Saratoga for wine tasting. It's amazing how perfectly acceptable it is, in modern professional culture, to drink (read binge) in front of your managers. I don't drink, so hopped in a conversation with a group of desi folks with a can of coke. The discussion went on for a while on Alphonso mangoes. How they are small, yet very tasty and how many people own their own orchards. I felt there was this one new guy who was getting distracted (read high). Now the group had many older folks who had children and the conversation drifted to teenage daughters and how hard it is to discipline young girls etc. Perhaps this guy just wanted to impress his managers or he was just plain drunk, but he had clearly lost context. At a pause he decided to break the silence... still with the context of Alphonso mangoes, he boldly went to give his take on teenage girls, "Ya... but I like to taste them when they are young and not very ripe"

************ Donuts ;) ************

Sometime mid 2009 was our product release date. Typically on such occasions the director of one of our teams, a fair healthy looking lady, would buy sweets and send out emails to invite people to her office (on the thirteenth floor). This release date however, it was a manager from a different team who decided to place donuts in her office (on a different floor) and send out the email. Now I am in a team which knows both managers. Soon after the email was sent, I was talking with the fair director lady (the one who did not know about the free donuts yet) in her office on the thirteenth floor. A happy guy walked into our conversation. The director lady paused and looked askance at him. In the most sweetest of voices and with utmost humility and gentleness, but to the wrong lady, he requested, "Ma'am, may I help myself to one of your donuts please?" !!

************ Mental Snowboarder ************

For Christmas 2009, I went with friends to the Kirkwood Ski resort at South Lake Tahoe. Having skied before I decided to learn snowboarding. People say skiing is easy to learn but hard to master and snowboarding is hard to learn but easy to master. They are right! What they might not tell you is that it is an impartial sport -- every part of your body hurts as you fall, roll over, crash, and it's not just your butt or knee, as you might imagine. For the first few hours, to me, the snowboard was like a magic carpet. Not having mastered turning yet, I would shout out verbal commands hoping it would make my "carpet" move in the right direction, "LEFT LEFT, ok RIGHT ok RIGHT". Fellow skiers and snowboarders would mostly just ignore me with nothing more than sympathetic glances at my deranged state.

But on one such run, one little expert-snowboarder kid kept staring down at me as I went on my mostly useless verbal command spree. I wished he would go away but he kept staring at me. I wanted to say "Shoo!" but before I could, he suddenly shouted, "You are coming loose". Thinking it was rather rude of him to make fun of my pitiable mental state, I found myself sarcastically snapping back, "YA, I KNOW, BIG THANKS!" It was only after my next fall, did I realize that the poor kid was merely pointing out that my back leg's snowboard strap had, indeed, come loose!

**********************
(Lesson to self - Be context sensitive or risk being insensitive)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!